Editorial: Obama must break gridlock in Washington

After a long, bitter campaign that seemed to divide the Union, an ebullient President Barack Obama Wednesday night embraced victory and vowed "the best is yet to come."

Not without a lot of help. And a change of heart. And, most important, a fundamental change in the vision - or lack of it - that grips the nation's capital.

Obama himself was the first to voice a new spirit of compromise.

The president, looking reinvigorated after a whopping win in the Electoral College and a decidedly less demonstrative victory in the popular vote, announced his intention to reach across the aisle, starting with an offer to sit down with the vanquished GOP standard-bearer, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The Republican, after holding out until the last shred of hope evaporated when Ohio and Virginia went into the Obama camp, was eventually gracious in defeat. Appropriately, he sounded like a man who had been changed by the cauldron he just went through and was looking for another kind of change.

"At a time like this we can't risk partisan posturing," Romney declared in his concession speech. He urged leaders of both parties to "reach across the aisle."

That might be a problem.

The same problem that has brought Washington, D.C., to a screeching halt: a living, breathing, salivating monument to political gridlock.

While Obama earned the right to call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home for four more years, he will have the same neighbors.

Republicans will continue to hold sway in the House; Democrats strengthened their grip on the Senate.

At least one powerful Republican seemed ready to turn a new leaf.

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, vowed a willingness to work with any partner, Republican or Democrat, to get things moving again in the Capitol.

"The American people want solutions," he said after the vote that will keep him in his leadership post. Of course, he felt compelled to add that voters responded by renewing the GOP majority in the House.

Included in that House Republican delegation is U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan, who convincingly won a second term to represent the 7th District, including much of Delaware County.

In claiming victory with the party faithful at Springfield Country Club, Meehan pledged his first duty will be working to break the logjam in D.C.

Not sounding nearly as conciliatory was Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The man who famously announced his goal to make Obama a one-term president obviously won't make good on that vow, but he's not exactly offering an olive branch either.

"The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president's first term," McConnell said.

Neither side has a lot of time to plot their next strategy.

That light at the end of the tunnel is indeed a truck, one that is preparing to careen off a fiscal cliff.

When a bipartisan panel failed to agree on cost-cutting moves, they left instead the so-called "fiscal cliff," $400 billion in higher taxes and $100 billion in automatic cuts in both military and domestic programs. They are due to automatically go into effect in January if Congress fails to head them off.

Meehan, Boehner, McConnell and the rest return to work next week.

Repairing the fiscal cliff is Job One.

The election is over.

It's time to move on with the business of the nation.

It seems likely that President Obama will have to sit down at a table with Republican leaders and haggle over the higher taxes he wants to impose on those making more than $250,000 a year.

Four years ago, Obama rode into Washington on a message of hope and change.

The deadlock in Washington the past two years could easily be described as hopeless and no change.

That needs to change. The voters have spoken.

They want action, not bluster; they demand answers, not petty discord.